MOORESVILLE, N.C. — PowerHome Solar laid off 500 workers and stopped sales in North Carolina, Texas and Georgia this week, citing losses related to defective equipment that led the company to sue its former provider last month.
This is the second round of job cuts PowerHome, doing business as Pink Energy, blames on the failure of a safety component in battery storage systems provided by equipment manufacturer Generac.
With the latest layoffs and another 600 let go last week, PowerHome has lost more than half of its workforce. At least 200 people were laid off in North Carolina last week. The company says it cannot say how many people were affected here in the current round.
In addition, PowerHome has entirely shut down a few locations nationwide and has stopped selling new systems in North Carolina — its home market and its largest — as well as Texas and Georgia.
Generac has not yet filed its formal response to the lawsuit. But a spokeswoman did respond to the allegations in the suit and in PowerHome CEO Jayson Waller’s general public assertions.
“In certain situations, especially when product installation guidelines have not been followed, as appears to be the case with some Pink Energy installations, customers may have experienced certain issues with a particular Generac component of their solar energy system,” she says. “We have introduced a new next-generation, rapid-shutdown device, which has been designed and engineered to the highest reliability standards.”
She says the company is working to get those “upgrades and warranty replacements taken care of as quickly as possible.”
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